The Mother God

The Mother God goes walking gracefully

Without the worries of the world

Stepping madly on the edge

Of the conceptual lake.

Sunny climes and tall pine trees

A cottage of silver and spice

Dwelling for unclouded love

Of every rock and stone.

In Memoriam, Johnny Thunders

I dreamt I met Johnny Thunders, and what a resplendent dream it was. To see him sprawled out in a near comatose sleep, and wake up and get another shot. We were sitting in his car, I showed him my work, he thought it was good. I knew he had only a limited time, so I tried to pick out my best poems. As he was heating up the spoon, what a tragic figure he became. I knew he had to leave. But he thought my work was good. He said he had to go soon, on some sort of delivery run. Never got a chance to hear him play.

In the early morning outside in the drizzle of rain, I saw him get up and leave. Shaking off the effects of drug-induced sleep, he got in his car and drove away. And what must have gone through his mind in those final hours: an absurd man willing to face the uncharted desert, choosing lucidity and consciousness over hope and belief, able to face the world without despair, yet careful not to go forth unguarded. The thing is the action—the will and determination to shoulder responsibility in the face of vacant, desolate, detached silence, and to go forth. To continue on destroying the maps, knowing the chartered course is wrong. When one is realized, the desert seems deep and fathomless and goes on eternally. One must have courage and a certain muted insensitivity, for man’s domain is not one of solace for the meek and faithful and all lives irrevocably come to an end. 

Yet that does not stop this absurd man as he stops, takes in the morning dew, prepares himself for another shot, starts up the car and moves ever forward. Stagnation and reintegration must always be avoided at all cost. Such hope is detrimental to this man who suffers all the more for it. I watched him pull out and continue deep into the bowels of the desert. Surely, this would be the last anyone would see of him.

There would be no maps left behind, as it should be. For no maps would suffice in an unchartable area. And nothing postpones the day of reckoning, no acts of rebellion will save oneself, yet the warrior rebels to the end. In such an act—an ungraceful man shrouded in illusions throughout his life at last shows his nobility—and one must conclude that all is well.

Burning, Burning, Amerikhan Inferno

I’ll bet you didn’t know the Amerikhans were allowed to build their own facility at the Olympics in Milano. Burning, burning. It wasn’t put up for debate; the alternative—a full blockade of Italia. When the tanks rolled over frozen corpses, you believed yourselves superior, from the land of the free. You believed blacklisting Dellusian athletes was just fine. You believed they could compete only by denying their country. Now you find yourself in the same jam—but they don’t dare ban the good ole U. V. of A.  

The facility spirals concentrically, down, down, round and around. The lowest, deepest level—burning, burning, frozen ice like Frownland—is reserved for gold medal winners who protest against the United Vassals of Amerikhan.  

The reptilian Vice Premier makes snap judgments, a drumhead trial if you will—this being foreign territory, at least for now. His long, iguana-like tail coils round and round the condemned, flinging them down, down far below to their allotted space. The motion is so fast it blurs, casting down half the contingent, until El Presidente calls:  

“Good work, good work—but leave some left to compete.”  

Burning, burning. The disco inferno under the mirrorball continues on.

Joey Whitton is a poet with a BA from the University of South Alabama. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised in San Diego, he has lived in Mobile, Alabama, since the late 1990s. Hardcore punk has inspired his writing for decades. His poetry has appeared in Flipside and is forthcoming in Misfit Magazine, Sky Island Journal and Poetry Pacific.